The Ripple XRP, the long-standing third largest cryptocurrency in the world has not had a good last few couple of months until last couple of days. It is under litigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of USA and had seen its price index plummet because of it. But, now because of another big market activity originating from Reddit Channel Wall Street Bets, the cryptocurrency saw a whopping 90% price increase in a matter of days.
Ripple’s flagship cryptocurrency project XRP is now the latest asset to gain attention from Wall Street Bets Reddit Channel. It is the same channel that that helped famously pump GameStop, a failing video game company and resulted in billions in losses for several large hedge funds. Now that the GameStop episode has cooled down, there are other assets that are being identified and pumped through the Reddit channel.
According to data from Coinmarketcap, XRP was worth around $0.27 on early January 29, just two days ago. However, after Redditors started and promoted a thread on WallStreetBets, a forum where stonks (stocks) are identified for pumping. Within no time, the cryptocurrency’s price index was increasing like crazy. However, unlike Dogecoin (DGC) that saw its price index increase by 700%, XRP’s rise was limited to 90%, which is still almost double in value from just a couple of days ago. XRP reached as high as $0.51 before falling to as low as $0.41 at one point. It was trading around $0.39 at press time.
There are several reasons why XRP’s rise is not as spectacular as other cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin for example. It is because first of all, it is a much bigger cryptocurrency and therefore, has a lot less room for expansion because of goliaths like Ethereum and Bitcoin in their relative places. Also, Dogecoin is not yet affected by regulators breathing down its neck, but XRP is. In December, the US SEC announced a federal court case against Ripple for selling its XRP cryptocurrency in an unregistered securities sale. Ripple denies these allegations but it is still a long legal battle and Ripple may or may not emerge from it unscathed.
While the XRP rise was quite small overall, it did manage to erase the losses suffered by the investors back in December when SEC announced its case against it. But, there is still time for the cryptocurrency to experience further gains. All other major cryptocurrencies are up or around their historic highs as we speak. For Ripple that is around $3, over 6 times the current value so there is still a lot of room for it to succeed.
Image source: Djandyw.com under CC
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